1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solder material useful for bonding of various metallic members such as electronic parts, mechanical parts and the like, and to a manufacturing method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a solder material containing no lead and enabling to form a suitable bond in joining of metallic members, and to a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Related Art
Soldering is an art for bonding a substance by using a substance having a low melting point, and has been used since old times. It is generally said that the origin of the soldering can be traced up to ancient Mesopotamian civilization. In current industries, soldering is widely used in assembling of mechanical parts and bonding of electronic devices. In regard to the electronic devices, the solder is used for bonding in a mounting process for mounting electronic parts such as semiconductors, microprocessors, memories, resistors and the like to a substrate. Its advantage is not only to fix a part to the substrate, but also to form electrical connection by electric conductivity of the metal contained in the solder. This point is different from organic series adhesive agents.
The solder which is generally used is eutectic solder composed of tin and lead, having a eutectic point of 183.degree. C. This is used for bonding sheet materials of aluminum, copper or the like. It is characterized by the eutectic point which is not only lower than the melting point of metallic base material to be soldered, but also lower than a temperature in which gasification of thermosetting resin begins. Further, it has been known that tin component of the eutectic solder forms a particular intermetallic compound on an interface with a copper plate, thereby intensifying bonding strength between the solder and copper. In addition to the eutectic solder composed of tin and lead having such a characteristic, solder composed of tin and zinc, solder composed of silver and tin. etc. have been used on trial. However, their wettabilities are poor, thereby providing a poor connectability. Thus they have not been used in actual fields.
As described above, bonding by soldering is still important in manufacture of electronic devices. In today's world in which personal electronic devices such as personal computer, mobile telephone and pager have been spreading quickly, the importance of solder in electronic device mounting technology has been intensified.
Spreading of electronic devices contributes to enrichment of people's life. However, on the contrary, if a large amount of electronic devices disused are scrapped, there is a fear that wasted electronic devices may pollute the environment. In view of this. recycle of electronic devices and manufacturing without use of harmful substances have been advocated. In particular, removal of harmful substances is desired for prevention of environmental pollution, and it is also required to develop in the art of bonding with solder.
From such a condition, bonding skill by using solder containing no lead has been demanded. However, solder in which lead is substituted with other metal or solder containing a combination of other metals cannot be handled at such a low temperature that bad influence upon the base metal by high temperatures can be avoided, and the wettability is so poor that the solder is not fixed to the base metal satisfactorily. Thus, such a solder can be applied to neither fine soldering treatment such as mounting in semiconductor devices or ordinary bonding by solder. Particularly, solder with tin and zinc has too many problems to be solved, therefore, it is considered impossible to use it for actual application in electronic mounting.
To enable use of solder without lead in fine soldering works such as thick film formation, conductor circuit formation and semiconductor mounting, a screen printing method using solder paste in which solder powder and flux are mixed has been proposed. The flux used in solder paste is generally classified to organic compound, inorganic compound and resin as shown in Japanese Industrial Standard Z3284. In the case when organic compound or resin is used, halogen salt, organic acid salt and the like of organic acid and amino group are frequently added as active ingredient. In the case of inorganic compound, ammonium halide, zinc halide, tin halide, phosphoric acid, hydroacid halide or the like are often added. Since these additives corrode metals, inspection for corrosion due to flux residue after reflowing of solder paste is necessary. Moreover, organic substance evaporating when paste is heated to remove flux, must be treated.